A telling scar at the front of his shoulder had her coming a few steps closer. “That’s a bullet wound. You were shot?”
“On a security job some months ago.” The shirt joined the belt, and his hands gravitated to the front of his pants.
Arousal jumped inside her as fitfully as the shadows dancing up the walls.
He brought the pants down, kicked them off.
No underwear. Just him, standing in front of her in complete rugged nudity.
And here she thought she’d have a few seconds to brace herself or to perhaps reconsider and back away.
“Don’t worry, this shouldn’t last too much longer. The water’s cold,” he said, apparently noticing that she stared at his erection with openmouthed fascination.
Whoever had carved the design of this man’s body evidently wanted to sink her with lust.
Zaf stood in front of the bathroom vanity and removed the silver ring. Her gaze tracked him from the vanity to the tub, and it hurt her to remember a time when she was at liberty to run her hand down the line of his spine and grasp his ass because his body belonged to her and hers belonged to him.
He turned the spigot. Lowering into the water, plowing his hands through and running them over his face and hair, he rested against the tub in a casual sprawl and considered her.
Beneath the nonchalance was taut intensity, danger that persuaded and provoked.
“Get in, Jo.”
“There’s a soaking tub in my bathroom.” Or she could get in the car and blast the air. Or she could flee to any one of Vegas’s downtown dens.
Staying here with Zaf wasn’t her only option. But still she didn’t move.
“Coming or going?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Tell you what. Get a deck of cards.”
Perplexed, she hesitated but the cavalier command was like a pat to her ass, urging her along. In the candlelit living room she found a catchall basket and dug up a box of Bicycle.
“Since you don’t know and I’m not going to decide for you,” he explained when she shook out the cards and handed them over, “let these figure it out.”
She watched him shuffle with dexterity that had her mind drifting to other talents his hands were capable of.
“Higher card trumps. If it’s yours, you walk. If it’s mine, you get in with me. That sound fair?” When she nodded, he said, “Cut the cards. Lady first.”
Joey took away the top half of the deck, revealing a ten of hearts. Not the best possibility, but a solid card.
Without a word, Zaf Charlier-cut the deck. Then, sitting back and taking a stab at a triumphant grin, he revealed the king of spades.
Chapter 7
“I’m not holding you to the game.”
Joey was in the middle of wiggling the cards back into their box. Fumbling over her task, she dropped them. “There are clothes and cards on the floor, limited light, and you didn’t put down a towel. This bathroom’s a cautionary tale in the making.”
This tub, in my arms, is a safe place for you.
She picked her way to the tub. “What do you mean, you’re not holding me to the game?”
“Just what I said. If you leave this room, I won’t follow in pursuit. The high card means nothing.”
“Gallant of you, Zaf,” she said, propping her cane against the tub. She bent and slipped off one shoe then held on to the tub’s edge to remove the other. “But I take card playing seriously. When I cut the deck, I knew there was a fifty-fifty chance you’d get the high card.”
“This isn’t one other thing that’s out of your control.” Zaf felt the cords of his neck tighten and his blood rush to his penis—despite the scientific psychology of cold water’s effect. “What you do next is your choice. But as a suggestion, take your dress off before you get in this tub. You will get wet.”
“What a pervert. My mamá warned me about men like you.”
“Your mamá’s a smart cookie.”
“She wouldn’t want me to be alone with a brooding, mysterious fellow who obviously wants to do dirty things to me in a bathtub.”
“So you have a choice to make.”
“Mmm-hmm. You’re here, I’m here and it’s a lonely night, Zaf.”
“That’s all it can be about.” I’m a lying bastard. I love you and I’m too weak not to.
“Just like when we cut those cards, I know what the stakes are.”
He almost bowed up to gather her in his arms, but the stern determination on her face warded him off as if she’d snapped, “Don’t interfere.” She would come to him without his help.
He had the entire night to make her come for him.
Zaf widened his legs, creating space for her to settle when she gripped the edge of the tub and stepped in with her right foot first.
“Cold,” she yelped. “It’ll cool me down, but it’s chillier than I expected. How are you coping?”
“My body decided to ignore it.”
“I see that.” Perched on the edge of the tub, running one foot over his under the water, she said, “This is as deep as I’m wading.”
“Worried about what I might do, Jo?”
“Nope. Just assessing things.” Thoughtfully, she reached out a palm and explored his bent knee. “Your body amazes me. The symmetry and the harshness… When we slept together, sometimes I woke up during the night and if I had trouble drifting off again, I would watch you sleep.”
“I’m not the world’s most peaceful sleeper.” Night terrors sometimes ripped him from dreams and threw him out of bed in a cold sweat.
“I remember. Whenever I noticed you in an angry dream, I’d try to soothe you. God knows if it ever worked.”
It had—often. Her gentle whispers and soothing touches had penetrated his subconscious, combating the demons that accessed him at his most vulnerable.
“Why stay in bed with a man fighting in his sleep and disturbing you?”
“I didn’t want to leave you to suffer. I was thinking that in your sleep on some level you’d know you weren’t alone. A girl in love—that was me.” She took her hand away. As hot as it was in this room, he missed her warmth. “Men don’t share my bed anymore. I’m a sprawler now.”
“Sprawler?”
“Arms and legs spread. I spread out across the entire bed because it’s all mine.”
“What position are you in when you wake up?”
She was quiet and the house was quiet, and for a moment there was only the hammering rain and the toss of the wind. “Hugging a pillow.” Discomfort had her posture straightening and her hands twisting the hem of her dress. “So what, anyway.”
Water trailed down his body as he stood. Cupping her shoulders, he let the burst of desire expanding her pupils spellbind him. “The way your nipples pucker up and you watch me with your eyes half-closed like that when you’re turned on… I swear that memory’s chased me for five years. This night’s gonna chase me for the rest of my days.”
“No, it won’t. When you do fall in love with somebody, you’ll forget the little things about me.”
“I told you I’m not capable of that.”
“I think you are. It’s going to be incredible. When you’re in love and you embrace it, it’s as if you’re at this place that’s the inverse of the worst you’ve ever felt. Joy can be as intense as misery. I’ve been there before, so I know.”
She’d been there before with him. She’d loved him, a man who was undeserving and unable to put her first. She thought he’d given up being Archangel the vigilante hell-bent on righting a personal wrong, but that was a necessary lie. Zaf and Archangel were still two halves of the same man and he hadn’t changed all that much.
Joey was the one who’d changed and sacrificed, and it wasn’t fair. “I’m sorry, Jo.”
“Don’t do that—pity me. Don’t touch me if you do pity me.”
He touched her, pinching her supple bottom lip and swallowing down her gasping little moan in a kiss. “Something’s telling me you
want my touch no matter the reasons behind it. There’s nothing wrong with wanting contact.”
“Wait. Aggie and all sorts of uncomplicated women in this town would gift wrap their panties for you, yet you’re in this stifling house doing bodyguard duty.”
“And?”
“And I want to know if this attention and the kisses and the touching is all because you feel sorry for me.”
Light and sound bloomed around them as the electricity was restored, but Joey didn’t move. She waited for an answer. No, not an answer, but the one she wanted to hear.
Zaf emerged from the tub and walked naked out of the bathroom. The cold water hadn’t cooled, calmed or numbed a damn thing between them.
The guest bedroom was too cheerful for his mood, with all the lamps now glowing along with the two votive candles Joey had given him. His duffel occupied a corner of the bed and he moved it to the floor. While Joey had been out with her friend, he’d brought clothes and equipment over from the bare-bones room he rented out of a dime-a-dozen motel.
It wasn’t far past midnight, but he would yank on a pair of shorts and do a sprawl of his own across this bed. Maybe, if he didn’t screw up and waste the night picturing Joey playing in the sheets and slithering around on the mattress, he would rest.
Detecting the tap of her cane nearby, he disregarded the common sense pleading with him to stay out of her way. He pursued the hallway, coming to an immediate, soundless stop when he saw her barefoot and beautiful, dousing a candle.
Joey lobbed a scowl at him. “What do you want?”
But the hostility didn’t interrupt his stride. Taking the candle from her and plunking it on the table, he dipped a finger into the front of the silk bound across her breasts and jerked her to him.
“Come here.”
“I’m here,” she said.
“Closer.”
She let the cane go. It slid free, clattering onto the wood floor, and she clung to his hips. Her fingers pressed into his damp flesh, and her russet eyes searched his with eager demand.
Zaf found her mouth wet and impatient. It invited him to the taste he couldn’t resist, to a tongue that opened him and taunted with each deliberate stroke. Catching each of her lips between his teeth, he held on until she gave him a sexy little whimper. Pushing back her hair and winding it around his fist like a dark honey strap, he said, “This isn’t pity, Jo. I don’t pity-fuck.”
They were rough words dressed up in even rougher tones, but this is how they were together from that first night in Mexico—blunt, natural, real.
Joey’s hands rode up his body, at last linking behind his neck. He swung her up but paused to reach for the cane.
“Get it later,” she tried to persuade. “It’ll be a wet blanket on what we have going here.”
“I’m not letting you feel trapped by leaving your stick out in the hall. You’re free to get out of my bed and go whenever you want.”
“Am I free to leave it here because it’s a reminder of all kinds of unpleasant stuff that I don’t want to wedge between us?”
“It’s our reality. You need the damn thing, and I’m the reason for it. If that’s too hard for us to face, then why are we doing this?”
“Leave it out here, the stick and all the hell.” She kissed his chest, his Adam’s apple. “I want contact. Give me that, okay?”
Contact. He could do that, because showing her more—such as the truth—would unleash trouble neither of them was meaning to tempt.
Swinging her up, he brought her to his room and set her in front of the bed. “Condoms, top middle dresser drawer,” she said.
“You keep condoms in a guest room? Who do you let stay here?” Her soft, sweet laughter followed him as he took a couple. “About that dress you’re wearing. If you’d followed my suggestion in the bathroom, you would already be out of it.”
A naughty smile in place, Joey sought the side zipper. The zipper hissed as it slid down the track, parting her dress. The fabric surrendered, pooling onto the floor.
Chaste pink lace cradled her tits and draped over her pussy like a garnish on top of something he was dying to taste again.
Unkempt and writhing where she stood, Joey reached behind her to release her bra. He crouched to rid her of the panties, but halted when his eyes fastened on the darkened scar marring the peach-soft smooth skin on her abdomen.
She was so damn tough to withstand this world and survive his unforgivable mistakes. He couldn’t help but love her. There would be no future with her, but he had himself to blame for that.
“Tell me if something hurts,” he said, kissing her scar and curving his hand over her hip. “What can’t you do?”
“Straddling you would be awkward.”
“Awkward?”
“Okay, painful.”
“What’s good for you?”
“Missionary, if I hug you with my knees pulled up. Come inside me from behind…”
Zaf looked up at her. “Babe.”
She laughed, shielding her eyes. “I was mad at you in the hall. Now I’m laughing.”
They’d always had a way of provoking each other’s highest highs and lowest lows. But he wanted to strip anger and humor away and discover what remained between them.
Still watching her, he pushed her panties down unceremoniously. He dragged the all-but-transparent fabric under his nostrils, then sucked on it before pitching it aside.
And the laughter died.
“I’ve missed you.” Lying on the bed, she flipped onto her stomach. “Get on top of me. Cover me. That should feel nice for you.”
Zaf wanted something beyond what would feel nice for him. He wanted her satisfied top to bottom, clean through.
Crawling onto the bed, knowing she was anticipating his mount, he changed direction and lay beside her.
Joey practically sprang up. The mattress barely shifted under her slight weight. It teased his self-control to not pin her and catch one of those peaked nipples between his lips. “Are we okay?”
“It’s about you tonight. Control’s what you want, isn’t it? So here is your opportunity. If you want control, take it.”
“Zaf… I want you.”
“Then take me.”
*
Joey didn’t want to lead.
How could he not know that? He should know.
She shook, impatient for reassurance that his body wasn’t deaf to the melody of hers, that he didn’t have to relearn her completely. But here he lay, choosing now of all moments to relinquish control. Instead of setting the tone, as he had out in the hall, he waited for her to act.
Was it really because she’d made an issue of not steering her own life—or was it because her fragility made him skittish?
Zaf had never held back before, but he did now. It’d been a while since she felt so damaged.
It’s about contact. Only contact.
Reinforcing the steel protecting her heart, she touched him. She began at his hairline, skimming her fingers over the fine silken strands. Then she moved her knuckles down the line of his whiskered jaw and ducked down to nuzzle it.
His coarse beard scratched; his chest hair tickled. Following the trail past his navel, she nestled between his legs, twirled her fingers through his pubes then tugged.
Zaf’s hips jerked and he reached down to clutch her head. “What was that for?”
“Just making sure I have your attention.”
“Damn it, you got it. Anything you want.”
He was so weak for her. She wanted to bask in the power, but could only focus on coaxing his pleasure.
Contact, she tried to remind herself, but it was next to impossible to lie when high emotions weakened her resolution to keep this about just sex.
She missed handling him, watching his cock grow hard and heavy in her hand, feeling her mouth water for the first taste of him to sink into her tongue.
Sealing her lips over the tip, she hummed, grateful for the familiarity of this. Everything around them had change
d, but this remained the same.
His hand moved from her head to the back of her neck. Spitting into her palm, she pumped his shaft. The wetter his flesh, the deeper she could take him. And the deeper she took him, the harder his fingers pressed into her. By morning there’d be impressions left behind.
On them both.
“Good you stopped there,” he groaned when she let him slip free of her lips. “My turn.”
“I’m in control, remember?” She pushed his chest and he lay flat on the bed again. “So here’s what I’m doing with it.”
Joey lowered again. The sides of her face were sore and her lips stung, but her mouth missed him. He was a jawbreaker of a man, but she gladly accepted the challenge.
Encouraging him to grind into her until she was able to tease his hair with her nose, she cupped his balls and swallowed. Coming up for air, she grinned and repeated the kiss.
The play of her muscles flexing around him had him crying out unfinished sentences and unintelligible words. Reluctantly, she let him go and massaged her throat.
Flopping on top of him, she let herself enjoy being the reason for his ragged breathing and the sweat on his skin.
“Jo. God, my Jo.” He molded a hand to her ass, waking up her nerves with a squeeze and a slap. “Who taught you how to do that?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“I’m trying to decide whether I should thank the guy or kill him.”
“Then it doesn’t matter. You and I—we matter.” She couldn’t hide her smile…couldn’t hide that she was happy. But oddly, she was sad, too.
This intimacy wouldn’t last. Even now, she was taking what she could get—not what she wanted. He wasn’t capable of giving her that.
She had offered him love and he’d tied up her heart, preventing her from fathoming taking the risk with someone new. It had been bearable when she believed he loved her, too.
Knowing that he hadn’t loved her and would never give her what she needed? That wasn’t bearable.
But hey, didn’t she always find a way to cope?
One More Night with You Page 11
